The present disclosure generally relates to flash memory, and more particularly, to apparatuses for managing and accessing a flash memory module.
Flash memory has been widely applied in various applications including memory cards, digital cameras, digital video recorders, multimedia reproducing devices, mobile phones, solid-state drivers, computers, and many other electronic apparatuses. Flash memory can be implemented with single-level cells (SLC), multi-level cells (MLC), triple-level cells (TLC), and so on.
The accessing (e.g., reading and writing) speed of the flash memory is crucial in many applications. For example, in secure digital (SD) cards, the write operation of the flash memory must be completed in 250 ms. Otherwise, the flash memory would be disconnected by a host device. The accessing speed of the flash memory can be enhanced by improving the performance of the flash memory controller, for example, improving the addressing performance of the flash memory controller by increasing the capacity of the built-in volatile memory in the flash memory controller. Increasing the capacity of the built-in memory, however, takes more space in the flash memory controller and the enlarged flash memory controller may not be suitable in some applications, nor complying with the trend of device miniaturization.